2017 Gold Best data strategy

Previous army campaigns motivated applications from people who were most likely to join anyway.

Communications needed to work harder to increase applications across all streams from a broader pool of people.

Strategy

To begin, Karmarama’s strategists took a data sample of previously successful recruits and matched this into their Continuum datapool - a proprietary aggregated database of 48 million UK adults.

From there, tech experts used neurolinguistics to model their interests and behaviours. A unique algorithm scraped social profiles of soldiers and matched the time stamps of their interaction with the army to what they were doing on social. This revealed distinct barriers and motivations and, crucially, provided social behavioural triggers that the team onboarded to all digital buys to optimise targeting and journeys.

Their creative strategists then used psychological studies and qualitative interviews to identify a universal emotional broad enough to be eventually tailored to the drivers now identified, making the candidate journey more powerful.

In addition, analysis of candidate data informed media weightings, tightening the media plan, not least in applying the identified social behavioural triggers to the contact strategy.

Creativity

The British Army needed to ensure that the sense of belonging they revealed felt unequivocally real.

Karmarama’s creative teams went and met real soldiers who feature throughout the campaign, seeking out authentic and unexpected stories of belonging.

Delivering a suite of online digital content that showcased moments of belonging, contextual to the individual's specific barriers and drivers, delivered to them at the most effective time.

The team created content rich journeys dependent on which messaging route the individual converted via, creating a seamless experience. By utilizing their tagging technology, machine learning, and AI capability, they were able to continually optimise content and budget distribution to ensure the content worked as hard as possible.

Everyone expects guns and tanks from the army. Karmarama shone a light on belonging, and made it more and more personally relevant, the closer candidates got to application.

Results

This is Belonging produced record-breaking results versus the same period the previous year, reporting 139% increase in completed applications for regular officers, 80% uplift in completed applications for reserve soldiers and 58% uplift in completed applications for regular soldiers